President Bush famously asserts that history's
verdict on his presidency won't come until he's long dead. But far from
waiting until his corpse is cold, the verdict is largely in before he's
even left the building.

Some things just aren't gone change, no matter how
much time passes. Here is Bush's legacy, in part:

He took the nation to a war of choice under
false pretenses -- and left
troops in harm's way on two fields of battle. He
embraced torture as an
interrogation tactic and turned the world's champion of human dignity
into an
outlaw nation and international
pariah. He watched with
detachment as a major American
city went under water. He was
ostensibly at the helm as the
worst
financial crisis since the Great
Depression took hold. He went from being the most popular to the most
disappointing president, having
squandered a unique opportunity to unite the country and even the world
behind a shared agenda after Sept. 11. He set a new precedent for
avoiding the general public in
favor of screened audiences and seemed to occupy an
alternate reality. He took his
own political party from seeming permanent majority status to
where it is today. And he
deliberately politicized the federal government, circumvented the
traditional policymaking process, ignored expert advice and suppressed
dissent, leaving behind a
broken government.

Bush's great hope is that Iraq in the years to come
will emerge as a thriving pro-Western democracy -- and offer some
vindication for the misbegotten war that will always be associated with
his name. (He has already done a masterful job of spinning his troop
"surge" as a profound success -- instead of a maneuver that has simply
postponed the nearly inevitable paroxysms to come.) But even if he does
ultimately have something to show for our incredible -- and profoundly
mismanaged -- investment of blood and capital, it will never be enough.

The coming years may shed some light on the great
ongoing mysteries of Bush's presidency-- How did he make his most
important decisions? Was it really him making the calls? -- but it's
unlikely that will reflect well on him. We may
never know the full extent of the
extreme measures he and Vice President Cheney took in their pursuit of
the war on terror. But at some point we should know enough to judge if
those measures actually made us safer -- or, more likely,
not.

Indeed, if history is at all kind to Bush, it may
end up giving him a backhanded compliment -- for having created such a
hunger for an
anti-Bush and for a
restoration of pre-Bush American
values, that he paved the way for the election of an African-American
president with the potential to heal the divisions that Bush
exacerbated, and clean up the messes he made.

In
His Own Judgment

Bush has been plenty willing to assert his view of
history's verdict on his presidency, even while saying it's too early
for others to do so. In a series of interviews before a trip to the
Middle East in January, for instance, he had a lot to say on the
subject.

"I can predict that the historians will say that
George W. Bush recognized the threats of the 21st century, clearly
defined them, and had great faith in the capacity of liberty to
transform hopelessness to hope, and laid the foundation for peace by
making some awfully difficult decisions," he said in
one interview.

"When he needed to be tough, he acted strong, and
when he needed to have vision he understood the power of freedom to be
transformative," he said
in another.

And in
a third, he said he hoped to be
remembered as someone who "has great love for the human -- human being,
and believes in human dignity."

Farewell Address

Bush will deliver a farewell address to the nation
Thursday night. It will be his last scheduled public event before
Inauguration Day.
Ben Feller writes for the
Associated Press: "White House press secretary Dana Perino said Monday
that Bush will 'uphold the tradition of presidents using farewell
addresses to look forward -- by sharing his thoughts on greatest
challenges facing the country, and on what it will take to meet them.'"

In a departure from previous farewell addresses,
however, Bush will employ one of his favorite public-relations tactics:
Human props. Perino said Bush would speak before a small audience
including "courageous people" Bush has met with during his eight years
in office -- and to whom he will presumably offer shout-outs.

Dana Milbank writes in The
Washington Post today: "In his own way, the outgoing president
acknowledged that the past five years have, by many measures, been one
long pratfall. But he spoke as though he were an innocent bystander,
watching the mishaps rather than having any culpability for them. To
Bush, they were not mistakes -- just disappointments."

Massimo Calabresi writes for Time:
"[T]here is no shortage of observers, some of them historians, who are
willing to point out where Bush's presidency went wrong. His
over-reliance on a cadre of ideological advisers who steered him in the
wrong direction is often the first error cited by critics. Vice
President Dick Cheney's dominance led Bush to many of the decisions he
now qualifies as disappointments, as did Donald Rumsfeld's bullying
leadership at the Pentagon. Bush's own ideological inclinations against
regulation certainly contributed to the financial crisis. And his
inexperience in foreign affairs made him unrealistic about what freedom
and democracy actually mean in much of the rest of the world.

"But Bush, by his own admission, is still
struggling to get a handle on where he went wrong. Asked a follow-up
question about why Washington had remained so partisan despite his
promise eight years ago to be a 'uniter, not a divider,' Bush said, 'I
don't know,' and suggested asking others. Even his reaching for the
safety of history reflects a kind of myopia. In that sense, Bush's final
press conference was most revealing for what it showed about his
inability to accept responsibility for his presidency."

Ted Anthony writes for the
Associated Press: "The session, televised live, was offered up as a
valedictory news conference. But it also proved an extraordinary glimpse
behind the psychic curtain and an illuminating window into what we want
-- and may not want -- out of the modern presidency.

"Bush was at turns erratic and eloquent, nostalgic
and melancholy, gracious and cantankerous, regular guy-ish and
resignation-era Nixonian. It all felt strangely intimate and,
occasionally, uncomfortable in the manner of seeing a plumber wearing
jeans that ride too low. . . .

"And the sight of a sitting president offering
vague mea culpas ('Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake'),
then affecting a fake whine while complaining about whiners who bemoan
the hardships of the office ('Oh, the burdens, you know. Why did the
financial collapse have to happen on my watch?') was just jarring.

"'I can't even construct a rationale for what they
were trying to do today,' said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the
Annenberg Public Policy Center and an expert on political
communication."

Jim Drinkard writes for the
Associated Press: "President George W. Bush claimed to have inherited a
recession that in fact began on his watch in a legacy-polishing news
conference Monday often at odds with his record." He does some
fact-checking.

CNN's
Campbell Brown focuses on what was
perhaps Bush's single most startling disconnect from reality: His
insistence that the federal response to Katrina was not slow.

"Now, many people will disagree over many aspects
of the Bush legacy," Brown said. "But on the government's handling of
Katrina, it's impossible to challenge what so many of us witnessed
firsthand, what the entire country witnessed through the images on our
television screens day and night.

"New Orleans was a city that for a time was
abandoned by the government, where people old and young were left at the
New Orleans Convention Center for days with no food, with no water. We
were there. The whole country saw what was happening."

Eugene Robinson writes in his
Washington Post opinion column: "In Bush's mind, the revelation of
shocking prisoner abuse by U.S. military guards at the Abu Ghraib prison
in Iraq was 'a huge disappointment' -- but he doesn't take any
responsibility, as commander in chief, for the atmosphere of lax
training and supervision that allowed the abuses at Abu Ghraib to
happen. The failure by U.S. forces to find weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq qualifies only as 'a significant disappointment' -- even though
the administration's apocalyptic rhetoric about WMD was what sealed the
deal for an invasion and occupation that never should have taken place."

James Fallows blogs for the
Atlantic that "the very sincerity of the President's comments indicated
how isolated he has been, or what he has chosen to forget."

About That Legacy

It's
Bush-Cheney legacy week here at
washingtonpost.com, with a series of roundtable discussions, articles,
op-eds, reader comments -- and me, aggregating assessments from all
over.

Richard S. Dunham writes in the
Houston Chronicle: "George W. Bush leaves office on Jan. 20 as one of
the most vilified presidents in American history. . . .

"'We have, by any polling measure, the most
unpopular president in American polling history,' said Republican
pollster Bill McInturff. . . .

"Democratic pollster Peter Hart says that Bush
faces years in the political wilderness.

"'I don't think time is going to change this
(image),' Hart said.

"'He is more like a Herbert Hoover that Democrats
will run against again and again. He is responsible for the condition
the country is in. For that, voters have reached a firm, fixed point of
view.'"

"The unvarnished review of George W. Bush's
presidency reveals a portrait of America he never would have imagined.

"Bush came into office promising limited government
and humble foreign policy; he exits with his imprint on startling
free-market intervention and nation-building wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

"He was the president who pledged not to pass on
big problems. Instead, he leaves a pile for Barack Obama."

Matt Spetalnick writes for Reuters:
"Not since Herbert Hoover left Franklin Roosevelt the Great Depression
has a U.S. president left his successor a litany of problems seemingly
as daunting as George W. Bush will bequeath to Barack Obama when he
takes office on January 20. . . .

"Some presidential scholars say it's too soon to
render a verdict, but many have made up their minds.

"'Can anyone really doubt that this was an abysmal
presidency?' said Shirley Anne Warshaw, a political scientist at
Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. 'All that's left to sort out now is
just how far down the list he goes.'"

Michael Kinsley writes for Time:
"The measure of Bush's failure as President is not his broken promises
or unmet goals. All politicians break their promises, and none achieve
the goals of their soaring rhetoric. But Bush stands out for abandoning
the promises and goals that got him elected, taking up the opposite ones
and then failing to keep or meet those.

"In 2000 Bush excoriated his predecessor for
launching wars without an 'exit strategy.' In 2008 he leaves his
successor a war that has already lasted for years longer than America's
involvement in World War II, with no exit in sight. Bush got elected
warning against using U.S. troops for 'nation-building' -- meaning any
goal beyond immediate military necessity. Then once in office, he
promised to bring democracy to the entire Middle East and ended up
destroying Iraq as a nation in the name of saving it. . . .

"The current economic calamity was a bolt from the
blue to many who should have known better, but only one of them had been
in charge for the previous eight years. Only one spent much of that time
bragging about how swell everything was, thanks to him."

The
Economic Legacy

Neil Irwin and Dan Eggen wrote in
Monday's Washington Post: "President Bush has presided over the weakest
eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an
analysis of key data, and economists across the ideological spectrum
increasingly view his two terms as a time of little progress on the
nation's thorniest fiscal challenges.

"The number of jobs in the nation increased by
about 2 percent during Bush's tenure, the most tepid growth over any
eight-year span since data collection began seven decades ago. Gross
domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, grew at the
slowest pace for a period of that length since the Truman
administration. And Americans' incomes grew more slowly than in any
presidency since the 1960s, other than that of Bush's father.

"Bush and his aides are quick to point out that
they oversaw 52 straight months of job growth in the middle of this
decade, and that the economy expanded at a steady clip from 2003 to
2007. But economists, including some former advisers to Bush, say it
increasingly looks as if the nation's economic expansion was driven to a
large degree by the interrelated booms in the housing market, consumer
spending and financial markets. Those booms, which the Bush
administration encouraged with the idea of an 'ownership society,' have
proved unsustainable. . . .

"One constant for Bush has been an optimistic, even
rosy, economic outlook. Throughout much of past year, even as the
Treasury Department and Federal Reserve began preparing for the worst
behind closed doors, Bush and his aides trumpeted the fundamental
strength of the U.S. economy and dismissed Democratic proposals for a
second stimulus package. A White House
fact sheet released on Sept. 5 was
titled: 'American Economy Is Resilient in the Face of Challenges.'

"Two days later, the administration announced the
federal takeover of Fannie and Freddie, setting in motion the most
sweeping government intervention in the economy since the Great
Depression."

The
Legacy Unknowns

Jacob Weisberg writes for Newsweek:
"It remains a brainteaser to come up with ways, however minor, in which
Bush changed government, politics or the world for the better. Among
presidential historians, it is hardly an eccentric view that 43 ranks as
America's worst president ever. On the other hand, he has nowhere to go
but up. . . .

"The Bush administration has had startling success
in one area: keeping its inner workings secret. Intensely loyal,
contemptuous of the press and overwhelmingly hostile to any form of
public disclosure, the Bushies did a remarkable job of keeping their
doings hidden for eight years.

"Probably the biggest question Bush leaves behind
is about the most consequential choice of his presidency: his decision
to invade Iraq. When did the president make up his mind to go to war
against Saddam Hussein? What were his real reasons? What roles did
various figures around him -- Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and
Condoleezza Rice -- play in the decision? Was the selling of the war on
the basis of WMD evidence a matter of conscious deception -- or of their
own self-deception? . . .

"Did Bush's own innocence and incompetence drive
his missteps? Or was it the people around him, primarily his vice
president, who manipulated him into his major bad choices?"

The
Legacy of the Bushes

Jill Zuckman writes for Tribune:
"The son watched his father, vowing not to repeat his mistakes. . . .

"As George W. Bush prepares to return to Texas,
historians will be judging his legacy in the context of his father's
single term as president.

"'The likelihood is that the father will be looked
upon as a steadier hand and better prepared for the job,' said Bruce
Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas who
specializes in the presidency.

"Cal Jillson, a political science professor at
Southern Methodist University, calls the senior Bush 'dramatically more
accomplished' in both foreign and domestic policy than his son. Still,
he said, 'They are in fact going to be doing chin-ups on the bottom tier
of presidents in modern history.'"

Now
He Tells Us?

In today's New York Times,
Gary J. Bass reviews Times White
House correspondent David E. Sanger's new book about what Bush leaves
Obama: "Mr. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for The New York
Times, drops the strict detachment of a daily reporter and lets rip,
delivering a withering indictment of his longtime subject: President
George W. Bush's foreign policy, which he writes 'has left us less
admired by our allies, less feared by our enemies and less capable of
convincing the rest of the world that our economic and political model
is worthy of emulation.'

"After seven years covering Mr. Bush, Mr. Sanger, a
shrewd and insightful strategic thinker, is left stunned by 'the
president's inexplicable resistance, until the final quarter of his term
in office, to changing course.' Mr. Bush, he says, saw strategic change
and negotiation as signs of weakness. . . .

"Most directly, Mr. Sanger bats back at the
argument made forcefully to him in 2007 by Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush's
national security adviser, that the administration never shortchanged
Afghanistan because of Iraq. Mr. Sanger writes, 'Time and again,
Afghanistan -- the country where the 9/11 plot was hatched -- was
overshadowed by the war in Iraq.' . . .

"'The Inheritance' offers up a painfully long
catalog of squandered opportunities. Mr. Sanger slams Mr. Bush for not
exploring the post-Sept. 11 possibilities of an alliance of convenience
with Iran against Sunni Arab extremists until the end of his second term
and notes that in 2005, at a potentially opportune diplomatic moment
when Iran had only a few centrifuges to enrich uranium, Mr. Bush was
preoccupied with Iraq. . . .

"Mr. Bush has taken to citing Harry S. Truman,
implying that history will vindicate his legacy in Iraq and beyond. 'The
Inheritance' is a devastatingly effective pre-emptive strike against
that."

Then
and Now

Timothy Lavin writes for the
Atlantic: "Since 2000, America has changed in small ways, in big ways,
and in ways that seem innocent enough now but no doubt herald some
radical disruptions to come. Many more people are poor, uninsured, and
in prison. Many more are billionaires. The burden of health-care costs
has grown heavier, and so have we. We charge more, save less, and play a
lot more video games. Even the things that haven't changed much--like
the amount of oil we consume, or the price of cocaine, or the size of
our military--reflect not so much stasis as unsustainable trajectories.
For Obama, responding to these problems will require breaking deep
national addictions--to oil, to etherealized finance, to profligacy of
all kinds--and, somehow, easing the tremens along the way."

Jay Nordinger of the National
Review writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "I will miss his decency and
directness and honesty. I will miss his fundamental goodness."

Fighting Revisionism

Erin Kelly writes for Gannett:
"Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a fierce opponent of the Iraq war, is
asking the Smithsonian to change some wording about the war that
accompanies the newly installed portrait of President George W. Bush.

"Sanders, an independent, objects to a portion of
the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery's text that says Bush's two
terms in office were 'marked by a series of catastrophic events'
including 'the attacks on September 11, 2001, that led to wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq.'

"The senator said the notion that the terrorist
attacks were linked in any way to Iraq has been widely debunked and
should not be perpetuated in the museum exhibit.

"'The 9/11 attacks did not lead to the war in
Iraq,' Sanders said in an interview. 'What President Bush was telling us
(before the war) was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that
Iraq was somehow in collusion with al-Qaida. Those were misstatements of
fact, as even President Bush has since acknowledged.'

"Sanders has written a letter to portrait gallery
Director Martin Sullivan suggesting he change the wording of the museum
text 'so that in explaining our current president's portrait we do not
inadvertently rewrite history.'"

Not
Too Late for a Few Softballs

Cheney's talk yesterday with
Sean Hannity was more like
hero-worship than an interview. A typically tough question from Hannity:
"Well, let me ask you this, as you look back on the presidency, I think
the President, through the prism of history, is going to be viewed as a
very principled, successful President. And that would include you being
Vice President, because I don't think -- I think most people's memories
are short. I think most people have forgotten the mood of the country
after 9/11. I think there were many, many decisions that were made --
tougher interrogations, Gitmo, the Patriot Act -- that have all
contributed to making this country safer. We seem to forget all those
tough battles, and that was the biggest focus obviously of the
administration.

"Do you believe, as I do, that history will be kind
to you guys?"

Rollback Watch

William Glaberson and Helene Cooper
write in the New York Times: "President-elect Barack Obama plans to
issue an executive order on his first full day in office directing the
closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, people briefed by
Obama transition officials said Monday.

"But experts say it is likely to take many months,
perhaps as long as a year, to empty the prison that has drawn
international criticism since it received its first prisoners seven
years ago this week. One transition official said the new administration
expected that it would take several months to transfer some of the
remaining 248 prisoners to other countries, decide how to try suspects
and deal with the many other legal challenges posed by closing the camp.

"People who have discussed the issues with
transition officials . . . said transition officials appeared committed
to ordering an immediate suspension of the Bush administration's
military commissions system for trying detainees.

"In addition, people who have conferred with
transition officials said the incoming administration appeared to have
rejected a proposal to seek a new law authorizing indefinite detention
inside the United States. . . .

"Catherine Powell, an associate professor of law at
Fordham, said transition officials appeared most interested at a meeting
last month in showing international critics that they were returning to
what they see as traditional American legal values."

Lara Jakes writes for the
Associated Press: "Also expected is an executive order about certain
interrogation methods, but details were not immediately available
Monday."

Karen DeYoung writes in The
Washington Post: "President-elect Barack Obama intends to sign off on
Pentagon plans to send up to 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but
the incoming administration does not anticipate that the Iraq-like
'surge' of forces will significantly change the direction of a conflict
that has steadily deteriorated over the past seven years.

"Instead, Obama's national security team expects
that the new deployments, which will nearly double the current U.S.
force of 32,000 (alongside an equal number of non-U.S. NATO troops),
will help buy enough time for the new administration to reappraise the
entire Afghanistan war effort and develop a comprehensive new strategy
for what Obama has called the 'central front on terror.'"

Charlie Savage writes in the New
York Times: "Democrats are hoping to roll back a series of regulations
issued late in the Bush administration that weaken environmental
protections and other restrictions.

"Potential targets include regulations allowing
concealed weapons in some national parks and forbidding medical
facilities that get federal money from discriminating against doctors
and nurses who refuse, on religious grounds, to assist with abortions. .
. .

"The enactment of such rules has been the subject
of a drumbeat of news reports in recent months. Though it can take years
for a new administration to complete the process necessary to overturn a
rule that has taken effect -- allowing a president to tie his
successor's hands -- Democrats will have far greater opportunity to
rescind Mr. Bush's late rules than has typically been the case in a
period when the party in power changes. With Democratic control of both
chambers of Congress and the White House, the political planets are
aligned to make much of the Bush administration's late handiwork
unusually vulnerable."

Who's in Charge?

Mark Landler writes in the New
York Times: "In an unusually public rebuke, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
of Israel said Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been
forced to abstain from a United Nations resolution on Gaza that she
helped draft, after Mr. Olmert placed a phone call to President Bush."

AFP reports: "'She was left
shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she
did not vote in favour,' Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of
Ashkelon. . . .

"'In the night between Thursday and Friday, when
the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the
Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour,' Olmert said.

"'I said "get me President Bush on the phone". They
said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I
didn't care. "I need to talk to him now". He got off the podium and
spoke to me.